324 TRIEST AKD PURITAN. [1650. 



England by granting the desired privileges on con- 

 dition of military aid. But, as the Puritans would 

 scarcely see it for theu' interest to provoke a dan- 

 gerous enemy, who had thus far never molested 

 them, it was resolved to urge the proposed alliance 

 as a point of duty. The Abenaquis had suffered 

 from Mohawk im'oads ; and the French, assuming 

 for the occasion that they were under the jurisdic- 

 tion of the English colonies, argued that they were 

 bound to protect them. Druilletes went in a double 

 character, — as an envoy of the government at Que- 

 bec, and as an agent of his Abenaqui flock, who 

 had been advised to petition for English assistance. 

 The time seemed inauspicious for a Jesuit visit 

 to Boston ; for not only had it been announced 

 as foremost among the objects in colonizing New 

 England, " to raise a bulwark against the kingdom 

 of Antichrist, which the Jesuits labor to rear up in 

 all places of the world," ^ but, three years before, 

 the Legislature of Massachusetts had enacted, that 

 Jesuits entering the colony should be expelled, and, 

 if they returned, hanged.^ 



Nevertheless, on the first of September, Druil- 

 letes set forth from Quebec with a Christian chief 

 of Sillery, crossed forests, mountains, and torrents, 

 and reached Norridgewock, the highest Abenaqui 

 settlement on the Kennebec. Thence he descended 

 to the English trading-house at Augusta, where his 



1 Considerations for the Plantation in New Em/land. — See Hutchinson, 

 Collection, 27. Mr. Savage thinks that this paper was by Winthrop. See 

 Savage's .Winthrop. I. 300, note. 



2 See the Act, in Hazard, 550 



